George A. Tannoury, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, a vice president and senior principal with Terracon Consultants Inc. (Terracon), has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Tannoury has dedicated most of his career to minimizing carbon footprint and safeguarding natural resources. With an unwavering passion for environmental sustainability, he has made significant strides in developing groundbreaking technologies and implementing innovative design approaches for various transportation projects. His expertise lies in optimizing resource utilization and promoting sustainable civil structures. His commitment to engineering solutions that balance economic growth with ecological preservation has earned him recognition as a leader in the field.
His doctoral research at the University of Kansas was focused on evaluating the laboratory and the field performance of chemically stabilized subgrade after microcracking (a field technique used to reduce the risk of shrinkage cracking within the chemically stabilized subgrade that could lead to reflective cracking in flexible pavement) and on the technique’s benefits for pavement applications.
Tannoury’s work resulted in a unique approach to characterizing chemically stabilized materials, simulating microcracking in the laboratory, and evaluating short-term and long-term effects of microcracking on properties of chemically stabilized subgrade. Proper characterization of chemically stabilized subgrades can provide the engineer a higher level of confidence to reduce, or possibly eliminate, the crushed aggregate base from low-volume road pavement sections. This would result in a significant cost reduction for new and reconstruction pavement projects.
In addition, Tannoury has developed special roller-compacted concrete pavement mixtures that mimic the look of conventional rigid pavement and outperform its strength by 20 to 30% while using less Portland cement. He is an active member on two Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees and has published several technical papers related to his research work on pavement materials. Currently, he is the office manager for Terracon’s Wichita and Garden City offices, and has been with the company for 17 years.
